


Things Could Be Stranger (But I Don't Know How)

by cecilia095



Category: New Girl
Genre: Drinking Games, F/M, Reunions, True American, needs its own tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-12
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 22:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6828568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilia095/pseuds/cecilia095
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So your love is a little... messy. That doesn't mean it's not love."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Could Be Stranger (But I Don't Know How)

**Author's Note:**

> Jess and Nick get back together during a very intense, very planned game of True American. 
> 
> \--
> 
> HOW GOOD WAS THAT FINALE?! I'm not even going to b*tch about the Reagan of it all, because honestly? It gave me this story. (And probably tons of other ones, too. Hiatuses suck, folks.)
> 
> The title of this fic comes from that beautiful song at the end of the "Wedding Eve" episode. You know, the scene where Sam went, "It's Nick" and the elevator closed and *JESS'S FACE* and I died? Yeah, that one. Listen to it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-K0MeOMt1k), it's good.

The game is everyone else's idea.

Not Nick and Jess's, though. Jess is, "Knitting, Cece. Knitting a blanket for _your_ unborn child. Why are you begging me to play a game you can't even participate in anyway?". Nick is on Skype with his not-so-present girlfriend while she's three timezones away and almost-asleep on the other side of the screen. When Schmidt and Winston approach him with a Heisler and a wrinkled American flag, he sighs and tells them he's going to bed, to play without him.

Thirty minutes and four (maybe five?) Heislers later, Jess and Nick are both dead center in their living room, each standing up on a wooden chair, screaming about how Winston's cat fell asleep in the lava, about how Cece can't deem herself 'referee' just because she decided to get knocked up before a very intense game of True American, about how Aly  _shouldn't_ bust that bottle of Gin open over the new throw blanket Schmidt just bought for the couch.

"Guys, I may be drunk, but I'm also  _miserable_ ," Nick says, his sixth beer grazing his lips. "Can you let me mourn in peace, please?"

"Who died, Nicholas?", asks Schmidt. "And don't say: 'My wardrobe', even though those pants look  _terrible_ on you. Why didn't you go with the khakis I laid out this morning?"

"Look, no one -- No one  _died_ ," he says with a huff, stepping down from his chair and right into the lava. Aly and Cece scream, "YOU'RE OUT!" at him, and he just waves them off and goes, "Good. Can I go to bed now?"

Cece, because she's the referee, is about to let him, but then Jess steps off of her chair and goes, "Wait. Let's talk about this."

"Not another 'Feelings Farm', Jess. No. Goodnight."

Jess shakes her head and hands her Heisler to Schmidt, and then she inches into Nick and loops her arm through his. "Not another 'Feelings Farm'," she whispers. "Just a 'Talk To Your Friend Jess About What's Bothering You'."

"That's a 'Feelings Farm' in a nutshell, Jess."

—

No one talks about their feelings. (Yet.)

Aly accidentally falls on Winston and Winston accidentally falls on Nick, and all three of them land in the lava. Cece yells, "YOU'RE OUT! _AGAIN_.", and Schmidt shakes his head and goes, "Babe, we've never had a referee before, we don't need one now."

Cece rolls her eyes and points to herself. "You did this to me!", she shouts, clearly forgetting it takes two people (and a lot of sex on Jess's bed) to make a baby.

Jess whines about how hard it is being on Schmidt's team without Cece participating, and then Schmidt tells her there's only one way they're allowed to decide new teams in the middle of True American.

" _Iron curtain_ ," he says dramatically, fanning himself off as he does.

"Not a good idea, the numbers are uneven," Cece protests.

"You can shoot a number up too," Aly tells her as she takes a swig of Gin right from the bottle.

"Oh, okay! Now I'm happy."

"Ready? Go!"

Cece and Jess both hold up three fingers, and Nick and Schmidt high-five each other.

"We're  _not_ making out behind the iron curtain," Jess says through gritted teeth, and then she watches Cece wiggle her eyebrows. "Cece! No! I know pregnancy has made you a horn-dog, but we're not kissing behind there, we're just not."

" _Fine_ ," she grunts, following Jess to the front of the loft. "And I'm not a  _horn-dog_. I had two, maybe three weird dreams about you, and you were only naked in one of them."

Schmidt sets the kitchen timer to fifteen minutes and tells them, "If you spent fourteen of those kissing, I wouldn't even be mad."

"Thanks, babe!"

"Schmidt,  _no_!"

—

"Cece."

Jess huffs and slides her entire body down the iron curtain. Winston yells out, "Thirteen more!", and then he starts to go, "Twelve-fifty-nine, twelve-fifty-eight...", completely defeating the purpose of the damn timer.

"I'm sorry we forced you guys to play," Cece says, sliding down next to Jess on the floor.

"No you're not."

"No, I'm not."

"You're trying to get me alone with Nick," says Jess, pointing a finger at Cece accusingly. "Why can't you guys just drop it?"

Cece laughs, her tongue between her teeth, and Jess swats her on the arm. "Every time he says Reagan's name, a little piece of you just... crumbles up and dies. Am I wrong?"

"Reagan's cool, Nick likes her, we're cool, it's cool..."

"Am. I. Wrong."

"No. You're. Not."

"Ha! I knew it." Cece smiles, looping one of her arm's through Jess's. "Jess, tell him how you feel before you never get the chance to again."

"What do you -- Why do I have --  _Now_?"

Cece suddenly gets serious, so serious that she pulls off the homemade 'REFEREE' sign off of her boobs and clears her throat and bats her eyelashes at Jess like Jess is a fat kid who got turned down for exceeding the weight limit on a rollercoaster. 

"Nick," she starts, "is planning on proposing to Reagan."

—

"Four-thirty-two, four-thirty-one, four-th --"

"WINSTON, SHUT UP, I'LL SHOVE YOU IN THE OVEN AND LEAVE YOU THERE."

"Okay, that's intense, Schmidt. Winston, I love you, but I do also want to shove you in the oven."

Jess ignores everyone's shouts from the other side of the iron curtain and realizes she hasn't said anything for eight minutes.

"He's... Wait, why is he proposing, they've only been dating for --"

"For awhile," Cece says. "Not to kill the mood even more or anything."

"My mood isn't killed, Cece! Why do you think that my mood is killed?"

"Your face is bright red and you have on your 'You're-Dead-To-Me' eyes. I'm scared, but also a little aroused."

"Ugh. Was I wearing a pink sash that says, "BIRTHDAY GIRL" like this one in your dream?", Jess asks, lifting Winston's sash up over her head.

"Yes, but you had on  _nothing else_."

"I can't wait until you have that stupid baby."

Cece rolls her eyes at Jess and goes, "You and me both."

"Wait, okay, so he's -- He  _told_ you? He told you he's proposing to her? Why would he -- I mean -- He didn't --"

"He probably didn't want to hurt you," Cece says nonchalantly, shrugging a shoulder. "Hey, did you decide the new teams, the timer is ticking."

"Are you  _serious_." Jess flashes her 'You're-Dead-To-Me' eyes right at Cece, and Cece holds both of her hands up in defeat. "Ceec, I don't know if I can do it."

"Fine, it'll go like this: You, Aly, Winston. They're very skilled. Nick and Schmidt can be together, because --"

"Not the teams, Cece. Nick! I can't watch Nick marry Reagan, I can't."

"You can't."

"I  _just_ said --"

"Jess..."

"C...ece..."

"Nick isn't proposing to Reagan."

"Nick isn't proposing to Rea -- What?"

"But  _thinking_ that he was got you to admit that you couldn't stand the idea for a second," Cece says, pursing her lips at her best friend. "Do something about it."

Jess's heart is racing like crazy, and her palms are sweating and Nick's stupid face is the only thing in her stupid head, and... "Cece, this is so -- Ugh. If you weren't pregnant, I'd Purse Fight 2.0 you, you know that, right?" 

"Jess, if Nick knew you were in love with him, he wouldn't be trying to make an almost-dead relationship work. Seriously, they're Skype-dating at this point."

"So? Cece, he's happy with her, or else he wouldn't risk going on the roof at 3 A.M. just to get a good signal to talk to her." Jess sighs at the thought. The other night, it was 3:45 in the morning and she couldn't sleep and Nick was in the kitchen punching his laptop because he'd lost connection with Reagan for the fifth time that night. He looked disappointed, and like Reagan  _really_ mattered, and Jess forgot all about her late-night bowl of Cocoa Puffs and went to sleep and cried over Nick Miller for the first time in a long time.

"Our love was good, but it was also messy and complicated and  _messy_. Cece, don't you think that's a bad sign; that I'm calling love 'messy'? I'm basically calling love 'Nick's bedroom', and we both know how disgusting Nick's bedroom is."

Cece takes her lips between her teeth and rests a hand on Jess's knee. "So your love is a little... messy. That doesn't mean it's not love."

The timer dings and Schmidt slides the doors to the iron curtain open, raising his eyebrows at the sight in front of him. Cece and Jess are both on the floor, and Jess is ten seconds from crying, and Cece's wearing Winston's pink "BIRTHDAY GIRL" sash, and no one decided on any new teams.

"Hey." Schmidt closes the iron curtain again, and Winston yells something about re-setting the timer.

"Jess? I'm sorry Cece told you he was proposing, but it was the only way to get you to do something about it," he says, lifting up a now-crying Jess from the floor of their loft.

Jess swipes her index fingers underneath her eyes and goes, "I know. Thank you guys."

"We just wanna see both of you happy," Cece explains, lifting up her arms and signaling for Jess or Schmidt to help her up off the floor. "As soon as I have this baby, it's True American: Newborn Edition. We can come up with like... a baby-themed drinking game, right?"

"Yeah, baby, sure...", Schmidt says just to shut her up, wrapping an arm around her backside. 

"What are you gonna do, babe?", Cece asks Jess, and Jess just lets out a huff and goes, "What I need to do."

—

The game finishes at 2 A.M. exactly. Aly and Winston (and Furguson) are passed out in the lava, beer cans surrounding them like a barrier. Schmidt drunkenly throws a throw blanket over his pathetically-sober wife on the couch, and then he goes into his room and shuts the door and then it's just Jess and Nick.

"Hi," Jess says lowly, hovering over Nick as he does his best to pick up the beer cans surrounding a passed-out Aly and Winston. "Don't do that. Schmidt's gonna be so pissed you left him nothing to look forward to in the morning."

"You're right," Nick says, backing up from the beer cans and throwing his hands up in defeat. "Listen, about before... It's not that I don't appreciate a good ol' 'Feelings Farm', Jess. I just..."

"My 'Feelings Farm' thing is kind of stupid. Last time we had one of those Cece  _and_ Winston cried."

"You got them to admit some deep, dark stuff, Jessica Day."

She tugs down on her lip and follows Nick into the kitchen, staying quiet as he pulls a water bottle out of the fridge for the both of them, tossing it over at her. "Thanks. For the water, not for telling me I made our friends cry during a very intense 'Feelings Farm'."

Nick wrinkles his nose and sits down at one of the barstools in the kitchen, and then Jess joins him. "Reagan's just... She's frustrating, and maybe it's crappy of me to complain about someone I thought was a literal  _goddess_ a year ago, but she's..."

"...Not?", Jess finishes, looking at Nick with sympathy in her eyes. He just nods, but doesn't say anything back. "I'm sorry. I know you wanted it to work out."

"We Skyped for six minutes today before she fell asleep on me.  _Six_. And four of those were spent talking about these weird new erectile dysfunction pills she's selling."

"If you're not happy then you should do something about it, Miller."

"I can say the same to you," he says smugly, and Jess feels herself start to sweat. She whispers a tiny, "W-What?" at him, and Nick lifts up his hand out of his lap, letting it graze hers for a second. "The other night when you came out to the kitchen and I was on Skype with Reagan, I -- I heard you after you went back into your room, and -- Okay, maybe it's a dick move to assume you were crying over -- Look, Jess, if you were crying over me, or whatever, you can -- I'm not --"

"I was crying over you, Nick," she says bluntly, easier than she thought she'd be able to say it. "I'm sorry."

"Hey, no, why are you sorry, I just... I didn't know."

"Did Cece and Schmidt tell you? I love them, but they think everyone else needs to be... set up. Ugh."

"Actually." Nick presses his lips together and shakes his head. "They didn't have to. You're a very obvious person, Jessica."

"What?! Am not!" 

"Jess, if you would've said something from the beginning, if you would've said, "Hey, Nick! I want to be with you!", I -- I wouldn't be as tired, for one. Do you know how late I stay up trying to talk to Reagan?"

" _So_ late. And you click the keys  _so_ loud. It's so annoying, Nick."

"Jess. I'm trying to tell you that I didn't know you were an option, okay? I thought that was in the past; that you dated me and decided, "Hey, he's not that great, glad I know!" and now you're moved on."

"Nick, what did I tell you the night Cece and Schmidt got married?", she asks. 

"You said: "They better not make a kid in my bedroom, Nick."."

Jess shudders. "Ugh. Every time I look at that baby I'm just going to see it's little face go: "Mommy and daddy made me on  _your_ comforter, Jess!" But no. I told you that you were incredible, because -- because you are."

Nick bites the inside of his cheek. "You're better than I am, you know that?"

"I cried over you into a bowl of perfectly good Cocoa Puffs. I kind of suck."

"You're selfless. You would've let me keep on being with Reagan just because you thought it's what made me happy. Jess, I barely even know how to load Skype let alone maintain a relationship through it. I'm not _happy_."

Jess sighs and loops her arm through one of Nick's. "I've kind of realized I'd do anything for you at this point. Except let you propose to Reagan."

"Propose to -- Wait, I'm proposing to Reagan?", Nick asks, obviously confused.

Jess shakes her head and scoots up further on her barstool, her grip on Nick's arm tightening. "Not anymore, you're not," she says, breaking his silence with a kiss.


End file.
